US hiring slows again as job growth settles into a stubborn crawl

The US labor market has officially entered a phase best described as economic purgatory: not bad enough to panic, not good enough to celebrate. July’s nonfarm payrolls dropped by 23,000, the first outright decline in months, and the broader trend suggests the slowdown isn’t going anywhere fast. Year-to-date, the economy has averaged roughly 60,000 new jobs per month. For context, that’s a fraction of the pace seen during the recovery years of 2023 and 2024, when monthly gains routinely ran multiples higher. The numbers behind the malaise July’s payroll decline wasn’t just a one-month blip. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised May’s job gains downward by 66,000 and June’s by 37,000. The hiring rate has settled at around 3.3%, a level that reflects employers’ deep reluctance to bring on new workers. But the flip side is equally telling: layoffs remain at historic lows, with weekly jobless claims hovering in the narrow band of 203,000 to 207,000. On August 28, the BLS released a preliminary benchmark revision that trimmed employment figures through March 2026 by 79,000 jobs total. On a seasonally adjusted basis, that works out to roughly 23,000 fewer jobs per month than originally c...